Flag of Kaliningrad Oblast

The flag of the exclave of Kaliningrad Oblast is a rectangle with a ratio of 2:3 divided into three horizontal stripes. The upper stripe is red having in the canton a silver-and-black stylized medieval castle with open gates and the monogram of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna (under which reign parts of the region were shortly under Russian control during the Seven Years' War), a thin (1/3 of the upper strip) yellow stripe in the middle and a dark blue stripe of the same size as the red bar.

The law does not state what the colours stand for. In the Russian press ^[1] it was stated that the silver fortress with open gates stands for hospitality, the dark blue for the Baltic Sea and tranquility, the yellow for the wealth of amber and the red for active man principle ("цвет активного мужского начала"). (Other sources state that red stands for the bellicose past of Prussia, the Red Army, the Hanseatic League, or the historical connections with Brandenburg and Poland.)

The law about the flag and the coat of arms went into effect on June 9, 2006. Previously this westernmost Russian region had no flag. When plans were made to adopt a flag another proposal was a tricolour with 3 horizontal stripes in green, white and dark blue^[2] similar to the flag of Sierra Leone. Another proposal was similar to the flag of Scotland, but with a yellow St. Andrew's Cross.^[3]

Notes

External links

Law of Kaliningrad region (# 16) about coat of arms and flag of Kaliningrad region (Russian)

Flags of Russian regions

Republics	Adygea Altai Bashkortostan Buryatia Chechnya Chuvashia Crimea¹ Dagestan Ingushetia Kabardino-Balkaria Kalmykia Karachay–Cherkessia Karelia Khakassia Komi Mari El Mordovia North Ossetia–Alania Sakha Tatarstan Tuva Udmurtia

Krais	Altai Kamchatka Khabarovsk Krasnodar Krasnoyarsk Perm Primorsky Stavropol Zabaykalsky

Oblasts	Amur Arkhangelsk Astrakhan Belgorod Bryansk Chelyabinsk Irkutsk Ivanovo Kaliningrad Kaluga Kemerovo Kirov Kostroma Kurgan Kursk Leningrad Lipetsk Magadan Moscow Murmansk Nizhny Novgorod Novgorod Novosibirsk Omsk Orenburg Oryol Penza Pskov Rostov Ryazan Sakhalin Samara Saratov Smolensk Sverdlovsk Tambov Tomsk Tula Tver Tyumen Ulyanovsk Vladimir Volgograd Vologda Voronezh Yaroslavl

Federal cities	Moscow St. Petersburg Sevastopol¹

Autonomous oblasts	Jewish

Autonomous okrugs	Chukotka Khanty-Mansi Nenets Yamalo-Nenets

¹ Internationally recognized as part of Ukraine.

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